Background

Nilima Mishra, our founder was born and brought up in Bahadarpur, the village that we first began our work in. Nilima finished her higher studies in Pune and went on to work with Dr S S Kalbag at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal. She then returned to Bahadarpur in 2000 and founded Bhagini Nivedita Gramin Vigyan Niketan with the sole purpose of empowering villagers to become self sustainable. Nilima was always deeply moved by the hardships of her fellow villagers and had set her mind as a young teenager to return to her village to make a change. She received the Magsaysay Award in 2011 for her work in BNGVN.

What started as an effort to provide women with skills for livelihood through computer and sewing classes has now become a 20,000-women-strong initiative for creating savings, livelihood and availing loans through Self Help Groups.

We have always been guided by the principle that we must support and enable villagers to build on solutions to their problems themselves and provide opportunities that will ensure they stand on their own feet. In 2004 when the farmers of the village approached us about the dire need to establish alternate sources for credit, we raised a capital and began providing loans at 10 percent interest per year. Today we have provided loans over a crore in total.

Our journey thus far has been exciting with a few failures and many learnings on the way. But today we stand determined to create self sustaining villages across India.